Why Sugar the Labour shirker should be fired
Work ethic: Apprentice star and labour peer Lord Sugar
Labour peer Lord Sugar loves to play the role of swaggering boardroom bully on BBC TV’s The Apprentice.
The self-made multi-millionaire gives short shrift to shirkers and never tires of telling the show’s would-be entrepreneurs how hard he himself worked to make his fortune.
Yet Lord Sugar (and woe betide anyone who fails to address him by his official moniker) does not always follow his own advice.
For, according to official voting figures for the House of Lords, he has only voted three times in the chamber in the past 12 months.
And, two of those votes were cast on the same day in March when his champion, Gordon Brown, was still in power. Such a voting record doesn’t quite match the Hackney-born tycoon’s modest comment when he became a life peer in 2009, saying he had accepted the title for ‘the need of the country’.
It even took five months before he delivered his maiden speech, in which he said to the toe-curling embarrassment of every listener: ‘Apart from [the title] Lord Sugar of Clapton, I seem to have been awarded another — that of “telly peer”.
'Well, my Lords, those of your lordships who may have stumbled upon the TV show may recall when it started six years ago that I made a statement: never, ever underestimate me.’
I, for one, have never underestimated the old rogue. I realised at the time that his appointment as a life peer was simply a PR stunt intended to woo fans of The Apprentice to the Labour cause.
Now, Sugar’s Lords voting record proves he’s added little to Parliament. What a pity such ornaments can’t be removed. Otherwise the new Labour leadership should say: ‘Lord Sugar — you’re fired!’
Struck off by Silly Sally
Offended: Commons Speaker John Bercow's wife Sally
Proof that Commons Speaker John Bercow’s wife Sally wears the trousers in that household.
She had my name struck off the guest list from a reception at Speaker’s House for her husband’s deputy Nigel Evans.
My crime, according to her latest load of drivel on Twitter, was to ‘gratuitously’ insult her.
For the life of me, I can’t see what’s ‘gratuitous’ about calling Silly Sally ‘stupid’.
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Labour leader Ed Miliband will return to the election campaign trail in the New Year in the first public test of his leadership.
Canvassing in the Oldham and Saddleworth by-election (which was triggered after a court ejected sitting Labour MP Phil Woolas because he lied about his Lib Dem opponent in election leaflets), Miliband will face awkward questions about why he appointed Woolas to the post of shadow immigration minister after he had used controversial leaflets designed to ‘stir up white voters’.
So far, Miliband has refused to justify his backing for Woolas. Certainly the people of Oldham deserve a proper answer.
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Vince strictly out of step
Reduced workload: Vince Cable
When David Cameron became Prime Minister, the choice of which government department he visited first was most revealing of his administration’s priorities.
Rather than drop in on health, education, Home Office or Treasury officials, the PM popped in on the unfashionable Department of Business, Innovation and Skills.
He wasted no time in heaping praise on the Coalition’s new Business Secretary Vince Cable.
Cameron said: ‘He is an absolute star in terms of economic policy and economic thinking. He has demonstrated that over the last few years in Parliament.’
For some reason, I don’t think Cameron now holds the same high regard of Strictly Come Bungling Vince.
Incidentally, now that Cable’s been stripped of his responsibilities for media regulation after he was recorded telling undercover reporters that he had ‘declared war’ on Rupert Murdoch’s empire, do you suppose his £140,000 ministerial salary will be reduced to reflect his lighter workload?
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Trade union firebrand Len (or, more accurately ‘Lenin’) McCluskey has promised a series of strikes across the public sector.
This is the same boss of Britain’s largest union, without whose members’ votes ‘Red’ Ed Miliband would never have been elected Labour leader.
McCluskey justifies the planned walk-outs by saying that the Coalition Government has no democratic mandate for its £81billion cuts programme.
